im that the morrow was the mother's fete-day. The
presence of the blithe all-hoping young, looking on with innocent
unconscious eyes at the veiled tragedy of love turned to bitter discord,
gives to such scenes their last touch of piteousness. Diderot, however,
observed the day, and presented a bouquet which was neither well or ill
received. At the birthday dinner the master of the house presided. "If
you had been behind the curtains, you would have said to yourself, how
can all this gossip and twaddle find a place in the same head with
certain ideas! And in truth I was charming, and played the fool to a
marvel."[199]

In the midst of distractions great and small, was an indomitable
industry. "I tell you," he wrote, "and I tell all men, when you are ill
at ease with yourself, instantly set about some good work. In busying
myself to soothe the trouble of another, I forget my own." He was
assiduous in teaching his daughter, though he complained that her mother
crushed out in a day what it had taken him a month to implant. The
booksellers found him the most cheerful and strenuous bondsman that ever
booksellers had. He would pass a whole month without a day's break,
working ten hours every day at the revision of proof-sheets. Sometimes
he remains a whole week without leaving his workroom. He wears out his
eyes over plates and diagrams, bristling with figures and letters, and
with no more refreshing thought in the midst of this sore toil than that
insult, persecution, torment, trickery, will be the fruit of it. He not
only spent whole days bent over his desk, until he had a feeling as of
burning flame within him; he also worked through the hours of the night.
On one of these occasions, worn out with fatigue and weariness, he fell
asleep with his head on his desk; the light fell down among his papers,
and he awoke to find half the books and papers on the desk burnt to
ashes. "I kept my own counsel about it," he writes, "because a single
hint of such an accident would have robbed my wife of sleep for the
rest of her life."[200]

His favourite form of holiday was a visit to Holbach's country house at
Grandval. Here he spent some six weeks or more nearly every autumn after
1759. The manner of life there was delightful to him. There was perfect
freedom, the mistress of the house neither rendering strict duties of
ceremony nor exacting them. Diderot used to rise at six or at eight, and
remain in his own room until one, reading, wr